THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This is as well as I’ve ever seen this described. Cardinals fans should be somewhat soothed by the knowledge they root for a team that was willing to open the wallet for Pujols, but the Angels had a bigger wallet. Pirate fans have gotten used to expecting our players to get shipped out before they even get to ask for big money.

Psychology is best left to the psychologists.

#2: Irrationality is a notion that belongs to philosophy, not psychology. All questions of rationality are about what we *should* do; what we actually do is psychology. (That’s not to say that there isn’t a great deal of mathematical modeling that goes into theories of rationality, but, at the end of the day, the question whether those theories describe how we should behave is a philosophical one.)

Anyway, in response to Tom’s thoughts: well said. Fans of the Cardinals will call him selfish for chasing the money. But who’s selfish here, the fan who wants Pujols to give the city of St. Louis $50m or Pujols who wants the $50m? I’m not sure it’s really fair to place my own love of team ahead of Pujols bank balance on the list of things that ought to happen.

Cardinal fans could also celebrate the fact that their team got Pujols for 11 years at well below his true worth, while the Angels are likely to pay him more than his true worth going forward.

Considering all the money that St. Louis saved, they could have stepped up and matched LA’s offer, but they weren’t willing to do that.

I really don’t understand the fans that believe that he had some sort of obligation to take less money than the going rate as some sort of “obligation” to the Cardinals. How many of them would take an equivalent job for less money?

I consider myself to be as avid as a Cardinals fan as any other.

I find myself more thankful for 200+M in surplus performance than I am anything else.

I don’t begrudge him at all for leaving, especially to an AL team where he c DH in his later years.

IMO, StL fans were expecting some type of discount due to numerous players saying how great it is to playing in StL and some guys taking less to stay there.

I didn’t feel that situation with Pujols. I figured he was well aware of the surplus value he provided and was expecting to be compensated for it. I expected him to take the deal that was best for him. Even if LAA offered the same $ and years as StL, I’d expect him to go to LAA because of the DH.

But Cards fans haven’t always been one-sided fickle, as many of us were upset that TLR chose Clayton over Ozzie even though The Wizard outperformed Royce in ST.

I think what we’re seeing is the most irrational fans get most of the press.

To be completely honest. Having Berkman and Craig, as well as, Wainwright’s return makes it easier to take. If the loss of Pujols meant StL dropped to a 4th place team, I might feel differently. But I also might be more mad at the FO for not paying him for his value.

Really, when he turned down the 9/200 deal to stay in StL, I figured there was a good chance he’s be elsewhere. I’m grateful that we ended his tenure with a title. 3 WS and 2 titles in the last 7 years. That’s more than most org’s experience.

Pujols, like all of us, simply took the option that he felt was best for him. I think it’ll work out fine for both organizations.

I’m hoping for a LAA-StL WS in 2012. I’ve viewed the organizations as being very similar to each other over the last decade+, and not just in uniform style/color.

Good luck Albert. Thanks for the last 11 years. We were hoping you’d be a Cardinal for life like Stan, Bob, and Ozzie, but we understand. You’ll still wear a bronze StL in the HoF and we’ll always remember that.

Sports is not art, I agree, but it is *like* art in that it touches you (me, at least) on a deep level.  My deepest levels, in fact.  Maybe a better comparison is family, or family combined with art.

Interesting how the artists themselves, the players, don’t see it anything like that.

Time after time, when I read interviews from the athletes, and they are asked whether they’d rather watch a game (even a big game) at home, or go party instead, they choose to party.

Tango,

That is exactly my experience. I know I have said before that I was stunned at how so many of my teammates in college knew next to nothing about stats or baseball history.

They simply played baseball because they enjoyed it, but mostly because it was something they were really good at. Many of them liked football much more than baseball, but simply lacked the speed/size combination to play football.

People that lack the talent to play professional sports seemingly have the exact opposite attitude, in that that would do almost anything to be able to be a professional athlete.

It’s not unlike musicians in a lot of aspects. They view it as work, often ... while we view it as the coolest thing on the planet.

@7, @8

I agree, that is quite an interesting element to the equation.  I remember reading Ball Four for the first time and coming to the line where Bouton says that he finds baseball boring and just about slamming the book down.  That’s OK with me, though, it doesn’t change my experience of the game, irrational and indefensible as it may be.

TT,

In the article you mentioned some fans feel an ownership of a player, and I’m wondering if that’s the case. Given American history, maybe that’s my own misinterpretation of the situation, and I am not implying anything negative towards you.

I think you are spot on with the usefulness aspect. Fans didn’t seem to feel any ownership to Ryan Franklin for example.

I think there’s also a deranged point of view among fans where we feel as though we’re part of the organization and think players feel the same way about us that we do about them. They don’t.

Gretzky and LeBron are a little different in that they were hometown kids that left success at home to go far away. A baseball equivalent might be a healthy and productive Joe Mauer leaving a good situation in MIN to go to BRS or something like that. In those cases the fans view it more like a family member leaving to join another family. Patrick Roy might be another example since hockey features the unique situation of a player leaving his home country for another, even though he’s beloved in his home country.

I think good points to be made are that fans are as fickle as the players if not moreso, and fans are not part of the team so there isnt any personal betrayal when a player leaves.

Albert Pujols fulfilled his obligation to the organization and then some. He provided surplus value and rushed back from injuries when the best thing for him might have been to take it slow. Many fans have an irrational relationship with players where we feel they owe us something above the contract or that they should ask our opinion on such matters. Fans often need reminded of our place, and too many fans have the “if it weren’t for us they’d be nothing” attitude. That leads to irrational expectations of a relationship that doesn’t exist as the fans perceive it.

Mauer and Roy are two good examples.  If Mauer continues to not be a superstar, the fans will turn on him, if they haven’t already, treating his contract as an albatross.

As for Roy: wow.  He is a bad-ass like Roger Clemens, except fans adored him for the two Cups, including one as a rookie.  He was left in nets for 9 goals, something unprecedented for a star goalie, and loudly proclaimed he will no longer play for the Canadiens, to the team president, during the game (who sits behind the bench).  The fans did NOT turn on him at all.

When they did a video review of the Forum two or three years later, he was featured near the end, winking his eye in that famous game, and the crowd erupted. 

We knew he gave us alot, and when he wanted to leave home, we let him go.

Oh, and in that game, the fans mocked cheering him when he made a save, and he gave us the finger (via his glove).

It was a fantastic thing to witness.  No grudges really.  Just one group of people, the fans, busting b-lls to someone they love.

No animosity in it, from either side.  Good-natured ribbing really.  As it turned out, I was at that game, and it was great being there.

"No.  The Cardinals fan is hurt because they know that Pujols still has plenty of joy to give, and as long as he has that joy to give, the Cardinals fan is the one who feels entitled to it, regardless of what Pujols wants.” In a poll by a STL media outlet a day after the Pujols signing, 50% said that the Cardinals benefited by not getting hamstrung with a 10-year deal, 25% blamed Pujols for being greedy, and 25% blamed the Cardinals for being cheap. Thus, when you write “[t]he Cardinals fan,” you’re actually writing about only the 25% blaming Pujols for being greedy. “Irrational despondency,” or even general despondency, is thus not plaguing the majority of Cardinal Nation; your premise is thus flawed.

Thank you for pointing out that I can only be speaking about the majority, as if 25% of Cardinals fans is so insignificant, that everything I said is irrelevant.

Don’t you have a party to go to, stick your head in the door, and tell everyone their party is lame?

A troll by any other name…